old waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation. “come, brian,” he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight, “after all, you're not such a fool as you pretend.”
“never said i was,” muttered dan to himself, with a backward glance of regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had worked his way back to it again.
as we were going out together, old waterhouse passed us on the stairs: “haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?” he asked sorrowfully, laying his hand kindly on dan's shoulder.
“yes, sir,” answered dan, with his frank smile; “plenty. it isn't yours, that's all.”
he was an excellent fighter. in the whole school of over two hundred boys, not half a dozen, and those only upper sixth boys—fellows who came in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to their own dignity—could have challenged him with any chance of success. yet he fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy fashion, as though he were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.
one afternoon, just as we were about to enter regent's park by the wicket opposite hanover gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an empty basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.
“can't come in here,” said the boy with the basket.
“why not?” inquired dan.
“'cos if you do i shall kick you,” was the simple explanation.
without a word dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next opening. the boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us: “now, i'm going to give you your coward's blow,” he said, stepping in front of us; “will you take it quietly?” it is a lonely way, the outer circle, on a winter's afternoon.
“i'll tell you afterwards,” said dan, stopping short.
the boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek. it could not have hurt, but the indignity, of course, was great. no boy of honour, according to our code, could have accepted it without retaliating.
“is that all?” asked dan.
“that's all—for the present,” replied the boy with the basket.
“good-bye,” said dan, and walked on.
“glad he didn't insist on fighting,” remarked dan, cheerfully, as we proceeded; “i'm going to a party tonight.”
yet on another occasion, in a street off lisson grove, he insisted on fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up against him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.
“i wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off,” explained dan afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat sleeve, “if he hadn't kicked it.”
on another occasion i remember, three or four of us, dan among the number, were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to hadley woods. as we turned off from the highroad just beyond barnet and struck into the fields, dan drew from his pocket an enormous juicy-looking pear.
“where did you get that from?” inquired one, dudley.
“from that big greengrocer's opposite barnet church,” answered dan. “have a bit?”
“you told me you hadn't any more money,” retorted dudley, in reproachful tones.
“no more i had,” replied dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end of his pocket-knife.
“you must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,” argued dudley, accepting.
“didn't buy it.”
“do you mean to say you stole it?”
“yes.”
“you're a thief,” denounced dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a pip.
“i know it. so are you.”
“no, i'm not.”
“what's the good of talking nonsense. you robbed an orchard only last wednesday at mill hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache.”
“that isn't stealing.”
“what is it?”
“it isn't the same thing.”
“what's the difference?”
and nothing could make dan comprehend the difference. “stealing is stealing,” he would have it, “whether you take it off a tree or out of a basket. you're a thief, dudley; so am i. anybody else say a piece?”
the thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. we all had a piece; but we were all of us shocked at dan, and told him so. it did not agitate him in the least.
to dan i could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me, and sometimes from him i received assistance and sometimes confusion. the yearly examination was approaching. my father and mother said nothing, but i knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my father, to see how much i had accomplished; my mother, how much i had endeavoured. i had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.
“are you going in for anything, dan?” i asked him. we were discussing the subject, crossing primrose hill, one bright june morning.
i knew the question absurd. i asked it of him because i wanted him to ask it of me.
“they're not giving away anything i particularly want,” murmured dan, in his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it must be confessed, not worth their cost.
“you're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?” he asked next, as i expected.
“i mean to have a shot at the history,” i admitted. “wish i was better at dates.”
“it's always two-thirds dates,” dan assured me, to my discouragement. “old florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that chap raleigh was born.”
“i've prayed so hard that i may win the history prize,” i explained to him. i never felt shy with dan. he never laughed at me.
“you oughtn't to have done that,” he said. i stared. “it isn't fair to the other fellows. that won't be your winning the prize; that will be your getting it through favouritism.”
“but they can pray, too,” i reminded him.
“if you all pray for it,” answered dan, “then it will go, not to the fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the hardest. that isn't old florret's idea, i'm sure.”
“but we are told to pray for things we want,” i insisted.
“beastly mean way of getting 'em,” retorted dan. and no argument that came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right thinking on this point.
he would judge all matters for himself. in his opinion achilles was a coward, not a hero.
“he ought to have told the trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that,” he argued; “king arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn't playing the game. there's no pluck in fighting if you know you're bound to win. beastly cads, i call them all.”
i won no prize that year. oddly enough, dan did, for arithmetic; the only subject studied in the lower fourth that interested him. he liked to see things coming right, he explained.
my father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me himself.
“it's very curious, paul,” he said, “you seem to know a good deal.”
“they asked me all the things i didn't know. they seemed to do it on purpose,” i blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. my father crossed the room and sat down beside me.
“spud!” he said—it was a long time since he had called me by that childish nickname—“perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the unlucky ones.”
“are you unlucky?” i asked.
“invariably,” answered my father, rumpling his hair. “i don't know why. i try hard—i do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. it always does.”
“but i thought mr. hasluck was bringing us such good fortune,” i said, looking up in surprise. “we're getting on, aren't we?”
“i have thought so before, so often,” said my father, “and it has always ended in a—in a collapse.”
i put my arms round his neck, for i always felt to my father as to another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.
“you see, when i married your mother,” he went on, “i was a rich man. she had everything she wanted.”
“but you will get it all back,” i cried.
“i try to think so,” he answered. “i do think so—generally speaking. but there are times—you would not understand—they come to you.”
“but she is happy,” i persisted; “we are all happy.”
he shook his head.
“i watch her,” he said. “women suffer more than we do. they live more in the present. i see my hopes, but she—she sees only me, and i have always been a failure. she has lost faith in me.”
i could say nothing. i understood but dimly.
“that is why i want you to be an educated man, paul,” he continued after a silence. “you can't think what a help education is to a man. i don't mean it helps you to get on in the world; i think for that it rather hampers you. but it helps you to bear adversity. to a man with a well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a cup of tea. i know. if it were not for you and your mother i should not trouble.”
and yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as i remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh hope, planning, scheming, dreaming again. it was never acting. a worse actor never trod this stage on which we fret. his occasional attempts at a cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our all three crying in one another's arms. no; it was only when things were going well that experience came to his injury. child of misfortune, he ever rose, antaeus-like, renewed in strength from contact with his mother.
nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of prosperity, were oft recurring. generally speaking, as he himself said, he was full of confidence. already had he fixed upon our new house in guilford street, then still a good residential quarter; while at the same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently central for office purposes, close as it was to lincoln and grey's inn and bedford row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the law's sad courtiers.
“poplar,” said my father, “has disappointed me. it seemed a good idea—a rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. it ought to have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't.”
“there have been a few come,” my mother reminded him.
“of a sort,” admitted my father; “a criminal lawyer might gather something of a practice here, i have no doubt. but for general work, of course, you must be in a central position. now, in guilford street people will come to me.”
“it should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in,” agreed my mother.
“later on,” said my father, “in case i want the whole house for offices, we could live ourselves in regent's park. it is quite near to the park.”
“of course you have consulted mr. hasluck?” asked my mother, who of the two was by far the more practical.
“for hasluck,” replied my father, “it will be much more convenient. he grumbles every time at the distance.”
“i have never been quite able to understand,” said my mother, “why mr. hasluck should have come so far out of his way. there must surely be plenty of solicitors in the city.”
“he had heard of me,” explained my father. “a curious old fellow—likes his own way of doing things. it's not everyone who would care for him as a client. but i seem able to manage him.”
often we would go together, my father and i, to guilford street. it was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the foundling hospital. the wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own will. we furnished them handsomely in later queen anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.
“this,” said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom into the smaller room adjoining, “i shall make your mother's boudoir. we will have the walls in lavender and maple green—she is fond of soft tones—and the window looks out upon the gardens. there we will put her writing-table.”
my own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.
“you will be quiet here,” said my father, “and we can shut out the bed and the washstand with a screen.”
later, i came to occupy it; though its rent—eight and sixpence a week, including attendance—was somewhat more than at the time i ought to have afforded. nevertheless, i adventured it, taking the opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in later queen anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father's name upon the door. “luke kelver, solicitor. office hours, 10 till 4.” a medical student thought he occupied my mother's boudoir. he was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. but i made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.
the poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her soft curls curtaining her quiet face.
